The Spiralling

Chapter 22: Shadow and Vengeance

It was like finding out that the Batman was the Joker all along, or that Peter Parker was an autistic boy who imagined being Spiderman in the end. I was stunned- my mind was on a permanent standstill when I stared into the unfamiliar eyes of the same person I was trying to save, "Mindy?" The only thing I could find myself doing was to just stand there and stare into her hostile eyes and think on the possibility that it couldn't be her, as she returned that stare.

"Mindy... Why?" My mind was still a total blank- I simply could not accept what was happening, and my superhero experience has taught me not to deny the truth, especially ever since my previous few close brushes with the Grim Reaper. The only train of thought chugging through my head was the question, 'Why?' The answer was obvious though, anyone who knew about our history together could easily say that Mindy had not forgiven me at all for her father's death. Yet, she could have killed me so many times before...

"I'm not Mindy." My Godsister snarled at me as she was wiping the blood off her face. Her wig was also starting to loosen, so she took it off as well, revealing the same blonde hair that she was born with. She was wearing a wig of long, flowing white hair all along- I should have known better.

"Mindy, stop it! I know it's you!" I couldn't help but to snap back at her, "Stop playing games with me! It's over!" I was given another round of disturbing laughter in return- it was even more terrifying that it came from Mindy when her cover was blown. 'Why?', the question was still stuck in my head, 'Why is she doing this?'

"Oh, but I'm not Mindy." Mindy repeated herself, and I could see the determination in her face. I knew Mindy well enough to know that she meant it- though to tell you the truth, I doubt I've seen her act to trick her enemies. She seemed strangely calm and collected, as though her injuries had all just disappeared.

"Who else could you be, Mindy?" All of a sudden, a surge of sadness overcame me. It didn't help that the fact that I had beaten her up unknowingly was still freshly imprinted in my head. 'Was this the way she had decided to punish me for the mistakes I've made in the past?' I thought as I knelt down, just so I could level my eyes to hers. Perhaps the reason why I did so was to let her see the tears that were welling up in my eyes, so that she would just stop denying her identity.

"I'm not Mindy." She said repeated herself again, as resolute as ever. It just upsets me even more.

"Mindy... I'm sorry for your father..." I started leaning closer towards her. I wanted to hug her so much, to just end it all like this and carry her back home. If anything, it was partly my fault- I helped to kill her only parent, her father, no matter how unintentional it was. Putting my hand on one of her cheeks, I pulled her towards me, and gave her that hug that I felt I owed her an infinite number of times, "Let's just end this right here, alright?"

Mindy seemed to sink into me. She didn't resist- though she seemed more still and silent than normal. At least, until she pushed me away and gave me a hard kick in the face. Even though that kick landed on my helmet, it was still strong enough to knock me silly. As I was seeing white the second time round, I could hear her moaning slightly in pain as she got up and ran off- I could hear her footsteps, "Mindy! Come back!"

Cradling her right arm, which was broken, I noticed, when I kicked her to weaken her just so I could unmask her, she was running away towards the stairs that lead to the storey below. I took off after her, and I was easily able to catch up with her unsurprisingly- She was limping quite badly and if I remember correctly, I broke one or several of her ribs. It broke my heart to see her that way, and it was even worse owing to the fact that I was the one who did all that.

Within seconds, I caught up with her before she could make a turn and disappear into the stairs and pulled her by her cape. Like a Gecko trying to escape, she loosened it and allowed it to come off as I pulled it. As a last resort, I took a lunge and grabbed her by the ankle, which surprisingly worked, considering how clumsy I was.

The wayward girl fell to the ground after I did. Crawling up to her, I tried to restrain her only to be bitten by her in the right arm- which made me remember the metal fangs fitted into her mouth- the fangs dug deep into my flesh, the excruciating, piercing pain forcing me to let go. As if I hadn't bled enough, more blood was seeping from my arm as I tried applying pressure to keep my red fluid in- it doesn't take a genius to know how to control bleeding.

Looking in the direction of Mindy, I realised that she had sooner crawled away as I was groaning away at my injured arm, reaching out to something on the ground which was just at the mouth of the staircase. Something brown and dark grey, something that could only mean trouble to me. Ignoring my arm, I rushed at her, but before I could stop her from seizing the object, she grabbed it and turned around, training it at me; it was a saw-off shotgun, taken from the corpse of a dead bodyguard. I froze, knowing that Mindy in the state of denial was nothing like a laughing matter.

"Mindy..." My voice was hushed into a whisper as I stared down the barrel of her salvaged shotgun. Mindy got up unsteadily, owing to her injuries, her gun always pointing at me without respite. At one point she yelped in pain as she was putting too much pressure on her right arm by holding the shotgun one-handed as she supported herself up with her other hand, "Don't..." Her gun was shaking violently, lacking the strength to carry it owing again to her broken arm, as she paused for a second, as if in contemplation- I had no idea what was going through her head.

"I'm not Mindy." Again, she denied- I really had no idea what was going through her head, but then again, I couldn't blame her. Who would want to be Mindy after all I did to her?

"Then who are you?" I decided to play along- it was the only way I could stay alive longer. What else could I do to avoid getting my head blown up?

"I... I don't know." She was starting to sound like a nutcase from Arkham Asylum, either that, or a real life super-sane person, "I'm her shadow, I guess." Her grip on the shotgun relaxed, and she dropped it from her eye level to hip level. My last-ditch method of staying alive worked; I just had to keep her talking.

"What do you mean?" At the same time, I needed to find out more, about what Mindy was doing in that new get-up of hers, about what she was doing killing everyone in New York, why she wanted to kill me, about why the fuck did she tried to kill Marcus, her beloved stepfather. Looking back, I thought I knew exactly who she was, inside out, but with all those crazy shit going on for the past week, she became a complete stranger, "Shadow?"

"I... I'm not Mindy, and yet I'm her, in a sense." Mindy, or her shadow, explained. Her right arm was still trembling, and so was the barrel of her gun. I could feel drops of rain falling from the sky. It was only now that I realised it was drizzling all along. I need to keep her talking, not just for the sake of living, "I came into this world months ago. I came here to do what she can't."

"What, to kill me? To kill your- her only family left?" Most of what was in my head became anger- How could she do this to so many? How could she do this to me, to herself? To our dear friend in the force, Marc?

"No, or rather, not just that. I'm here to make sure her parents didn't die in vain." She went on to explain, it sounds almost like-

"Vengeance?" It was obviously something dark. If anything, justice was already served when Frank D'Amico went down like 3 months ago. Anything more than that was either die-hard heroism or the opposite of that.

"Vengeance." Mindy's shadow nodded in agreement as she went on to explain, "I knew exactly what she wanted. Vengeance. She was just too weak to pursue it herself."

"So you think killing everyone's going to solve everything?" Vengeance was never really my thing, just a flicker of thought in my superhero fantasy. It was about as close as the staple of every fictional comic book I could get my hands on. I knew very well anyway why vengeance was just plain wrong.

"No, but killing everyone who caused Mindy's father's death would." If Mindy really wasn't herself, if this shadow was real and not a Mindy creation, then she must be really obsessed with revenge- The way she talked and what she had done had really got me thinking that it was the only thing she was ever concerned about.

"What, and that includes all those good cops down there? What about me? What about my friends and Marcus?"

"They were in my way. I can't afford to get distracted now, can I? Nothing wrong with that, is there?" Mindy's shadow was quite fucked-up alright, "As for you, you're one of them." No point denying that I wasn't- that was one part I could agree with. She raised her shotgun to chest level, like some soldier in a firing squad, and I was the one to be executed.

So it all came down to this, where there wasn't a point to struggle anymore. There was no point dodging, running, nor talking- I had already found out everything I needed to know to make sense of what was going on, that Mindy was fucked-up in the head. The only regret I had, or the only one I could think of, was that I wasn't good enough to put that pain inside of her to rest before it all happened.

I shut my eyes tight in anticipation of the inevitable. If I had to die, I wouldn't want to die seeing the pellets from a shotgun shell travel towards me at a speed faster than sound. I wouldn't want to see my guts flying all over the place and my blood painting the floor. A second passed, two. A few seconds passed, and yet nothing. The wait was killing me if Mindy wasn't. Feeling brave enough, I opened one eye, then the other.

Mindy was gritting her teeth, her eyes locked on her shotgun in intense concentration. Her shotgun was shaking violently. Her trigger finger was halfway from fully pulling the trigger that would send me upstairs. It was as if she was trying very hard not to.

"Let go!" She cried as she was still struggling in this state- it was as if there was a world war in her mind and who was that she was speaking to? "Let go now!" Deep down inside of her, I knew she couldn't do it- but it was all happening in a way I had never anticipated. What the fuck was wrong with her?

It was my chance to avoid a rather sad, sad ending to my saga. I launched myself at her, knocking her down with me. Simultaneously, her saw-off shotgun went off, but thankfully not with me behind the barrel. Seizing her shotgun with one hand, I took from my utility belt my taser, "I'm sorry."

With that, I pressed the device against chest and pressed the button, but I had clearly forgotten how much contact I was having with her, and how heavy the rain was becoming. We were both getting shocked, the effect stronger because of the water. I couldn't stop- the electricity was forcing my fingers to tighten. It was a full fifteen seconds before I could see smoke billowing out of my taser, and another few long seconds before it stopped working. By the time it did, the only thing I could see was darkness...